Marcella Eubanks quaffed the first beaker, a trifle timorously, it is true, for the word “punch” had stirred within her a vague memory of sinister associations.  Sometime she had read a tale in which one Howard Melville had gone to the great city and wrecked a career of much promise by accepting a glass of something from the hands of a beautiful but thoughtless girl, pampered child of the banker with whom he had secured a position.  For a dread moment Marcella seemed to recall that the fatal draught was named “punch.”  But after a tentative sip of the compound at hand, she decided that it must have been something else—­doubtless “a glass of sparkling wine.”  For this punch before her was palpably of a babe’s innocence.  Indeed it tasted rather like an inferior lemonade.  But it was cold, and Marcella tossed off a second cup of it.  She could make better lemonade herself, and she murmured slightingly of the stuff to Aunt Delia McCormick.

“It wants more lemons and more sugar,” said Marcella, firmly.  Aunt Delia pressed back the white satin bow on her bosom in order to manage her second glass with entire safety.

“I don’t know, Marcella,” she said in a dreamy undertone, after draining the cup to its cherry.  “I don’t know—­it does seem to take hold, for all it tastes so trifling.”

As each lady arrived she was led to the punch-bowl.  When the last one had been taught the way to that cool nook, there was a pleasant hum of voices in the room.  There was still an undercurrent of difference as to the punch’s merit—­other than mere coolness; though Miss Eubanks now agreed with Aunt Delia that it possessed virtues not to be discerned in the first careless draught.  The conversation continued to be general, to the immense delight of the hostess, for she had dreaded the ordeal of that formal opening, with its minutes of the last meeting; and she had dared even to hope that the day’s paper might, by tactful management, be averted.

She waxed more daringly hopeful when Clem came to refill the punch-bowl.  She felt that she owed much to the heat of the day, which was insuring the thirst of the arrivals.  The punch and general conversation seemed to suffice them even after their first thirst had been allayed.  She began to wonder if the ladies were not a more unbending and genial lot than she had once suspected.

A considerable group of them now chatted vivaciously about the replenished bowl, including Madam the President, who had arrived very thirsty indeed, and who was now, between sips, accounting for the singular favor which the Adams family had always found in the sight of God and the people of Massachusetts.  She seemed to be prevailed over, not without difficulty, by Aunt Delia, who related her failure to learn from Clem the ingredients of his acceptable punch.  This was not surprising, for Clem was either never able or never willing to tell how he made anything whatever.  Of this punch Aunt Delia had been able to wheedle from him only that it contained “some little fixin’s.”  Insistent questioning did develop, further, that “cold tea” was one of these; but cold tea did not make plain its recondite potencies—­did not explain why a beverage so unassuming to the taste should inspire one with a wish to partake of it continuously.